


maybe it keeps me high

by belatrix



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Zombie Apocalypse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 12:59:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13636779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belatrix/pseuds/belatrix
Summary: “Thebooks,” Rick ends up saying, quite lamely.Negan laughs, crawls across the mattress and drops a kiss to the side of Rick’s throat, “I’ll buy you new ones, you absolute gorgeous fuckingnerd,” and when his lips find Rick’s again, Rick lets him.





	maybe it keeps me high

**Author's Note:**

> The College AU no one wanted and no one asked for, 'cause I couldn't not do it.

 

 

 

The first time, it goes something like this:

“Close the fucking door, the noise’s giving me a headache.”

Which is, as far as romance is concerned when it comes to first meetings, surprisingly indicative of what’s to follow. Perhaps that should have been his hint; a sort of otherworldly neon sign, with a lit arrow pointing straight towards the opposite direction.

But Rick merely blinks, stands a little straighter and only hesitates for a breath before pushing the door shut, the whole doorframe rattling with the force of it. “Right,” he says, mostly to save face, and― “you gonna go back in?”

The stranger laughs at that, low and sort of rumbling, like it’s all a spectacularly funny joke. The leather of his jacket is expensive but cracked and peeling, and he seems to be looking out into nothing as he leans over the railing, a cigarette dangling carelessly between his fingers, smoking thinly. His eyes are dark, the knuckles of his right hand are bruised, and Rick doesn’t even know his name.

“Fuck no.” He glances at Rick over his shoulder, heavy, lingering, the sort of look that Rick should be able to decipher as either an invitation or a threat, and it’s somewhat alarming that it seems to be both.

“Well, it’s freezing out here,” Rick says, uncertain. “You, uh, sure―?”

For a moment, there’s something sharp and focused in those eyes locked with his, as if they were looking Rick over for weakness, a predator’s natural instinct. But it dissipates, and there’s another burst of laughter, open and full-bodied and hoarse. “Fuck, Baby Blue, who the hell even are you? No one ever tell you not to talk to strange guys at frat parties?”

“You don’t look strange.”

“Now, you’re _real_ fucking nice, thanks. Well. I’m Negan.”  His skin glows bright and sick as the strobe light swings inside, silver rays sliding through the cracks in the windows. “Want one?” he asks, pulling a crumpled, half-empty pack of smokes from his jacket pocket.

“Thanks, uh. I don’t―”

“Good. Smoking’s bad for you. Gives you wrinkles. Cancer. All sorts of fucked up shit.”

“Right,” Rick says, and, in lieu of nothing, “you smoke.”

Negan smiles, then, wide and cutting, and the cigarette caught at the edge of his mouth is like a match stuck to a scalpel, like he could light the whole place on fire on a whim, laugh about it and walk away, “Maybe I’m bad for you too.”

Rick takes half a step forward, and the sudden movement makes the world around him blur into starlight and smoke, a fog that he tries to blink through and makes his eyes water. _Damn tequila_. Or― whatever the hell it was that found its way to his glass. “I ain’t nice.”

Negan just blinks, “’scuse me?”

“You said I’m nice. I ain’t _nice_ ,” there, he’s said it again, and he really, truly wishes there was someone to shut him up or drag him bodily away right about now. He’s drunk. He’s very, very drunk.

“Oh,” Negan says, and it’s so _soft_ , lost in wafts of smoke, “oh, you’re nice, sweetheart.”

 

 

 

The second time ―well, it doesn’t quite count, because Negan doesn’t so much as send a darting look at Rick’s way.

 _However_.

The second time, he breezes into the classroom half an hour late, long and careless and swathed in black leather, flashing the professor a cheerful smile as he walks over to an empty seat. He looks slightly hung-over, slightly belligerent, which Rick will come to recognize, later, as one of his default settings.

Rick stares for all of ten seconds, at which point he realizes he’s staring. And quickly looks away.

 

 

 

Rick doesn’t ask around, mostly.

No, correction: he truly, genuinely doesn’t.

But Daryl has this friend who has a friend who is sort of friendly with a guy whose girlfriend is in some sports team or the other, maybe baseball, maybe softball ―and there she is, one bright, fever-hot morning, crossing over the campus to where Rick’s sitting in the shadow, books open in his lap. He looks up at her when she comes to stand over him, hand on her waist, her gaze an indecisive mixture of sympathy and boredom.

“Hey,” Rick says, uncertain.

She’s pretty, he thinks, in an absentminded way that might’ve been more focused if he was used to beautiful girls seeking him out in corridors and cafeterias like they do some other guys, or perhaps if he didn’t still spend most of his nights trying to shake the memory of sleeping with Lori next to him off his shoulders. At least he can count on Daryl to blast old, _old_ rock at midnight so obscenely loud that it drowns out every other sound in the dorm, leaves him unable to sleep at all.

She holds out a hand. Perfectly manicured, he sees, and for some absurd reason feels the urge to hide his own hands, sloppily cut nails and all, under his textbooks. “I’m Sherry,” she offers, and only then lets her mouth curl into a small smile. It looks just the tiniest bit pitying. “Heard you met Negan,” she says, the same way someone would’ve said, _heard you got into a car accident_.

It’s only words, but they press down on Rick, slow and thick and heavy like the southern sunlight, like this is the beginning of something vaguely threatening that he might not be able to walk away from.

Rick promptly reminds himself he’s being stupid. Possibly over-thinking things, too. He does have a tendency to do that, Lori used to say.

So, “yeah,” he says, making a passable attempt at nonchalance. “Only talked to him once. At a party. Why?”

She sighs, ends up telling him about Negan ―and, well, it’s not like Rick can just walk away and not listen.

 

 

 

The thing about him is: Negan waltzes into Rick’s life like he was never not there.

It’s casual, the way he starts appearing right out of the corner of whatever room Rick’s happening to be in, easy and confident, in that quietly prowling  way of his. Rick bites his tongue, fixes his eyes resolutely ahead, pretends not to notice.

But Negan notices; and he notices _Rick_ , of all people.

“Dude’s a fucking stalker”, Daryl tells him one afternoon, voice thick with low-shelf whiskey as they share chicken wings from a paper container on the floor of their shared living room, 90’s cartoons playing in the background. “Way he looks at you, ‘s creepy. Call the cops, man”.

Rick just laughs it away, because what else is he supposed to do?

 

 

 

“You’re― Rick, right?”

Rick turns to the sound of the voice, hoists the strap of his backpack higher up his shoulder.

There, all over again, a wide smile like an incision into a stranger’s face. He has ridiculously nice teeth, Rick thinks, absurdly. Very white. The air around him smells like hair gel, and cigarette smoke, and fresh coffee scalding in the styrofoam cup in his hand; it must be burning his fingers, steam wafting off of it in waves that almost carve a hole in the room, but he doesn’t seem to mind. In truth ―his attention is on Rick, only on Rick.

It weighs him down like a physical thing, this insistent gaze, and Rick squares his shoulders as if he’s got to rise up to some challenge.

“Didn’t get your name last time. But, hey, second chances and all that, right? So let’s try again. I’m Negan.” He tilts his head to the side, just barely, and that fixed smile widens still like Rick’s his child and he’s absolutely delighted at how he’s turned out. “You know, Sherry said you’re awfully clever, passing all your classes with flyin’ colors.”

Rick stays quiet, bites down the sarcastic _thanks_ as soon as it rises up his throat. Perhaps if he engages in the good old animal stare-down, Negan will be disheartened and walk away. Rick isn’t one hundred percent sure he wants him to walk away.

The silence hangs, draping over them thick and electric, humming with something Rick doesn’t have a name for. He takes a deep breath. “Something else you wanted?” he finally says, biting, sharper than he meant.

A short laugh. “Sure,” Negan says, inching closer. “Hey Rick, how ‘bout we study together some time? Since you’re so smart and all, and I never seen a decent fucking grade on my papers. You could, uh, _tutor_ me. Help a fellow out, you know?”

And Rick ―he says yes.

 

 

 

Negan’s there at eight, sharp, still-bruised knuckles rapping soft but insistent on Rick’s door.

(Daryl’s out, thankfully, mentioned the name Jesus and laughed until his ribs ached when Rick blinked slowly, dumbfounded, and asked when and how in the hell Daryl had taken an interest in religion, of all things.)

He walks in like it’s _his_ place and the little room seems to grow bigger around him,  shifting and stretching out to accommodate his presence as he takes a long, contemplative look around.

It’s nothing impressive ―small and cramped and somehow always messy, even though Rick made a valiant attempt at cleaning up earlier that day― but Negan gives an appreciative little hum anyway, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

“ _Love_ it,” he says happily, and holds out a bottle. “Here. Brought you wine― and it’s top fuckin’ quality, okay, none of that cheap convenience store shit. Thought we could have a drink while we study. Let it not be said I ain’t a considerate houseguest.”

He toes off his boots and leaves them at the door even though Rick didn’t ask, and flashes him an inviting, warm smile as he disappears inside the bedroom. “Hey, grab two glasses,” he calls out over his shoulder, and for a moment, just a single moment, Rick is nearly spellbound, is left staring after him and the utter nonchalance with which he made himself at home in Rick’s place, within mere seconds of crossing the threshold.

They end up sitting crossed-legged on Rick’s ratty single bed that he doesn’t sleep much on, perfectly symmetrical across from each other, books and spiral-bound notebooks scattered haphazardly between them.

Rick’s placed a careful distance between their knees, makes sure they won’t accidentally touch, and he can feel something curling and twisting low in his stomach every time he looks up from the pages to Negan’s face; _his_ gaze never strays from Rick, but it’s maybe a little easier now, less penetrating.

Like he glanced accidentally once, and just wanted to keep looking.

“Really,” Rick finally says, giving a small sigh, “you never gonna understand any of this if you keep staring at my face instead of the equations. Look, it ain’t that hard, you just gotta―”

Negan leans forward, then, only half an hour into their farce of a study session, long legs knocking the books off the bed as he slides his fingers around Rick’s neck and kisses him.

It’s shockingly soft, nothing but lips carefully nudging lips apart ―a question, perhaps, as if he were waiting for approval; Rick closes his eyes instinctively, and when there’s a gentle, barely-there bite of teeth into his lower lip, he opens his mouth, lets Negan’s tongue slide slowly against his.

Negan makes a little sound like a moan into Rick’s mouth, free hand coming to curl on the slight curve of his waist, and that’s when Rick splays his palms against Negan’s chest, pushes him a little away.

“Stop,” he breathes, “hey, stop―”

Negan does immediately, pulling himself away like Rick’s mouth burned his. His eyes are wide and hard with something nearly feral, but he lifts his hands from Rick’s body and shifts several inches away, letting out a sharp exhale. “No?” he asks, hoarse.

“No, it’s―” Rick swallows down nothing, feels his heart sputter. He looks away, waves a hand to the floor, now littered with his textbooks and his notes. “The _books_ ,” he ends up saying, quite lamely.

Negan laughs, crawls across the mattress and drops a kiss to the side of Rick’s throat, “I’ll buy you new ones, you absolute gorgeous fucking _nerd_ ,” and when his lips find Rick’s again, Rick lets him.

 

 

 

There’s no slow, tentative beginning to it, nothing like the cautious first steps Rick’s always supposed relationships naturally take, and they fall into it instead, like a pair of drunk drivers who couldn’t wait for the light to turn green, head-first and without much preamble.

It’s dizzying, exhilarating, a whirlwind of emotions high and low and everything in between and Rick in the middle of it, Rick’s days filled with dark eyes and darker hair and knife-edged smiles, Rick falling asleep to the sound of sweet, sweet nothings in a low, rumbling voice against his skin, everything magnified, like a million waves breaking against the hull of a ship in the middle of the ocean.

Negan is mercurial in a sort of oddly alluring way, that has Rick looking, searching, never bored. He wants to drink now, sleep now, fuck now; he always brings _something_ when he spends the night at Rick’s, from a bottle of wine to a handful of flowers he picked on the road to crude, messily wrapped gifts like handcuffs and vibrators that Rick throws in the back of a drawer, laughing; he lives on his own and will absolutely refuse to do any dishes until there’s colonies of mold growing on them; he kisses every single millimeter of Rick’s bare skin like a godless prayer, hands reaching everywhere as if he’s running out of time.

Negan pushes him up against the window, his body covering Rick’s, arms closing around him, holding him tight and _there_ , teeth biting softly into his shoulder, and Rick shifts, “Negan, shit, no curtains, someone might look up and see―”

“Fuck ‘em, let ‘em see.”

“Slow down,” Rick tells him, breathless, high on Negan’s tongue and Negan’s teeth and Negan’s grin outlined against the back of his neck, “hey, slow down, we got time.”

Dark eyes find his in the soft glow of the bedside lamp, words tumble and catch and stutter in Rick’s throat. _We got time_ , he wants to say again, wants to keep saying it, but everything about Negan seems to burn to the filter as fast as his cigarettes ―and there’s that small voice in the back of Rick’s head, always, beating along with his pulse, that small nagging thing that tugs and claws at Rick’s insides and has him thinking _what if, what if_.

He pushes it away, because―

― _because_ , he might not admit it if you push him but might blurt it out if you startle the truth out of him; Rick believes in love. He likes love. Rick’s a forever kinda guy.

 

 

 

“Your roommate,” Negan says, sprawled out on Rick’s bed in his underwear, eating soup straight out of the can and idly twirling a lighter between his fingers, “fucking hates me.”

“Nah, he doesn’t.” Rick doesn’t look up from his notes, because Negan might not have a care in the world for midterms, but Rick definitely does. “Daryl just―”

“ _Hates_ me,” Negan says again, and chuckles. He stretches out like a cat across the twisted sheets, lets out a satisfied little hum. “No worries, baby. I’m used to it.”

Rick glances over at him, frowning, but then Negan’s left the bed and he’s walking over and he’s kissing him, hot and open-mouthed, and Rick doesn’t really know what to think.

So he kisses back.

 

 

 

“You should be more careful,” Sherry tells him when he’s having a lunch break, sliding next to him. “With Negan, I mean.”

Rick attempts a laugh, takes a bite from his sandwich just to avoid that knowing, only-barely condescending look in her eyes ―because, yes, it’s not like he doesn’t have his doubts, alright, but he’ll be damned if he lets any of that ruin a perfectly fine relationship, “Yeah? Why?”

He _is_ somewhat familiar with Negan’s past, and gossip has always infected campus like a virus that you can’t ward off, no matter how hard you try to keep your eyes and ears shut to it ( _he’s got in with a bad crowd, keep away, I heard he has a gun, and didn’t that girlfriend of his die? was she sick? they say he beat a guy half to death once, and remember that one time when he―_ ) but things… they’re good. Almost surprisingly so, and Negan’s sweet more often than not, and always honest, and always _there_ , and Rick doesn’t mind getting lost in him just as much as Negan seems to be getting lost in _him_.

Sherry shrugs, a shoulder rising and falling indolently. “Hey, this isn’t about me, whatever he and I had is very, _very_ much over. You know that. It’s just―” she trails off, lets out a breath. “Look, you seem like a nice guy, that’s why I’m telling you. Just― be careful with him.”

Rick gives a shrug of his own, bringing a water bottle to his mouth, “okay, fine,” and regrets it as soon as he says it because that definitely sounded mean, and she’s probably genuinely trying to help out; so he smiles at her to diffuse the tension, offers her a chocolate bar. “What about _your_ love life, anyway? Daryl says that guy Dwight’s a bit of an ass, too, you know.”

And she laughs, a little, holds her hands up in a placating gesture. “Alright, alright, you got me.”

Her face, however, it still says, _don’t say I didn’t warn you_. Rick makes a point not to.

 

 

 

They fight, but so does everyone else on the planet, so Rick doesn’t think much of it.

And there’s a certain odd comfort to their fights, too: how they’re always about the small, inconsequential things, stupid and painfully trivial, while the big matters, the serious ones, are carefully swept aside and locked away to simmer and rot.

They yell about sideways glances and smiles thrown at other people, unwashed dishes, don’t do that when I’m studying you know it’s annoying, why the fuck would you cancel for tonight I’ve spent two fucking weeks finding us tickets, how come you’ve never taken me to meet your parents, why is she looking at you like that, will you ever stop that―

―and they’ll be throwing insults back and forth, Negan looming over him with that terrifying glint in his eyes and his voice like a growl, Rick glaring like he could burn a hole in Negan’s face by sheer force of will and spouting the most hurtful words he can think of, refusing to back away for a single second, don’t let him smell weakness; and it ends, always, _always_ , with them tumbling into bed, lips kissing teeth biting nails scratching, that thin line between violence and passion blurring and twisting around them, and they come out of it with bruises and marks laced all across skin; “you’re an asshole,” Rick pants, sinking down on Negan’s cock; “oh, fuck you,” Negan breathes as he comes, shuddering and clawing at Rick’s back so hard he draws blood.

And, after, when they’re sweaty and exhausted and tangled up in damp sheets, he’ll pull Rick close and kiss him like he’s dying, run his hands through Rick’s hair soft and slow. “Sorry,” he says, mumbles the words into the pillow, into Rick’s curls, into Rick’s mouth.

“Yeah,” Rick whispers, “sorry.”

They’re fine. It’s fine. As long as it can all end with them together, pressed up so tightly against each other that there’s no room for air left between them ―it’s fine. _When he turns away_ , Rick thinks, _when he backs down without a fight, decides it’s not worth it,_ then _it’ll be serious_.

It’s his real fear, the one thing that burrows into his bones and closes up his throat every time Negan falls asleep curled up in the covers instead of Rick’s limbs; that one day Negan will look at him, from his spot on the bed, puff out a halo of smoke up to the ceiling and tell him, “I’m bored.”

But he’s here, now, all of him, hands gripping Rick like a vice, not letting go. Rick rests his head on Negan’s chest, listens to his heartbeat as it evens out, falls back into a steady rhythm. It’s all he can do.

 

 

 

It’s midnight, and Rick says― “I love you.”

Negan blinks, turns to look at him in the darkness of the bedroom. There’s something softer than lust in his eyes, something harder than affection.

Then he just sighs, gets off the bed and lights a cigarette.

 

 

 

“The hell you doing with him, anyway,” Daryl asks him, every chance he gets. “What do you see in him.”

Rick never answers, but―

His laugh, how it comes so easy and so often, aimed at the fun things and the horrible things alike; “you could be a bit more sensitive,” Rick says, and still he laughs, and laughs, pulling Rick close and kissing him and laughing until Rick’s laughing too.

Or, that way he was of casually walking into a room and making it his, striding in like the world ahead is ready for him to take, if he just reached out his hands and grabbed it.

He seems to look down on everyone and everything, except for Rick. Rick, he looks in the eye, stands beside him and not above, fingers linked together, his thumb stroking the back of Rick’s hand.

His cooking: almost always terrible, and by unspoken agreement limited to the two things he actually seems able to cook. He makes Rick eggs in the morning, spaghetti in the evening, accompanied by generous doses of booze, winks at him, “your very own master fucking chef, baby.”

Or it might be that his wardrobe is so dreadfully _limited_ , always that same leather jacket and tee, and that unapologetic grin when he flings open Rick’s closet and rummages through his shirts and his button-downs, “mine’s in the washing machine, just for today, Rick, scout’s honor” ―and Rick shaking his head, hiding a smile of his own, knowing he’ll never see whatever clothes Negan _borrows_ again. “Fucking _look_ at this, it’s awful on me, why the hell does blue look so good on you, Rick, I look like a fucking Smurf. Must be your eyes, baby. Blue brings ‘em out.”

How he kisses Rick: hungry, open, demanding, _hurry hurry hurry, can’t get enough_ , and how it feels when there’s a change of pace, when he goes slower. In languid, hot mornings when he’s lazy and hung-over and reaches out to twist a curl of Rick’s hair around his finger, leans close and peppers kisses all across Rick’s neck and jaw line before meeting his mouth, lazy, tender _, I could do this forever, Rick_.

His face in bed, that way he has of looking down at Rick like he’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, and at the same time like he wants to tear him from inside out, eat him up, eat him whole. And the sex ―yes, the sex too, because it’s good, and when it’s not good it’s amazing; the things he does to Rick with his hands, and his tongue, the things he moans into Rick’s skin when his cock is moving inside him, hands alternating between grabbing the sheets and Rick’s hair.

Rick can’t say any of it, not out loud, so, “not sure,” he says, changes the subject.

 

 

 

When it does happen ― _when it does happen_.

Rick might have expected a fight, screams, hurling things, broken glass. Rick might’ve welcomed it all.

 

 

 

The last time, it goes something like this:

Rick returns to his dorm one afternoon after class, mind half-focused on tomorrow’s due essay and half-focused on the dinner date he’d promised Negan, opens the door and walks in and throws his keys on the teetering coffee table, all very usual, all very routine, until his eyes fall on Daryl in the middle of the room, Daryl’s enraged expression and Daryl’s black eye, fresh bruise blooming across half his face.

“What―” Rick starts, voice faltering.

“Rick,” he says, hoarse and downright murderous, “that asshole’s fucking _crazy_.”

Rick drops his backpack to the floor, doesn’t have to ask which asshole ―because, alright, Negan _is_ somewhat crazy, but only sometimes, and still it’s nothing too alarming, nothing out of the ordinary, and yet it feels like something inside him has dropped and shattered, heart kicking against his ribs.

“Punched me in the goddamn face when I said he get the fuck outta here, the hell’s _wrong_ with him,” Daryl’s saying, high and furious, as Rick walks, frantic, to the little room at the back they’re using as a bedroom.

There, on the bed, strewn across the hastily made covers, is Negan’s leather jacket, and on top of it a single piece of paper, white and square and unassuming, stitched carefully into the lapel. Rick swallows down nothing, picks it up with a barely-trembling hand.

 _I love you_ , it says, and, _Sorry_.

Just that, and nothing else.

Just that.

 

 

 

Rick ―well, he cried.

He closed the door and told Daryl he was fine and he sank to the floor and he cried. And then he got up, punched Negan’s number into his phone, called again and again and again, and gave up after the thirteenth time going straight to voicemail.

He keeps the leather jacket; he grabs it, half-wishing he could tear it apart with just his hands, takes it out to the corridor and holds it right above the nearest trashcan and stands there, fingers gripping leather that smells so achingly, so _horribly_ familiar, and then he turns around, walks back to his room and throws it in the back of his closet.

It stays there. He tries to make himself hate it, thinks about taking it out and burning it every time he cleans ―but it stays there.


End file.
